Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate all the speakers, and I identify with what they've said. We've just heard reports directly from the doctor's mouth. He has actually dealt directly with these people. In 12 months time, 1,000 women will be dead because of this disease. We just heard the member for Macarthur say that there hasn't been an improvement in the last 15 years. You've heard all of the government's proposals outlined. You've heard it outlined that the current minister has put $20 million into further research. We thank him for that, and then we say, 'That's not enough.' Why is it that with ovarian and pancreatic cancer the moment we hear about it we throw up our hands? Well, obviously the health sector doesn't throw up their hands with any patient in Australia—not one. Everybody gets care. What an amazing country we're in where you immediately get care.

Isn't she beautiful? This is me last week at Sally's funeral. That's a photo of her as a young girl and another photo of her as a young girl on the back, with her devastated father and family. The marriage didn't work out, but she was an amazing person. She was absolutely incredible. She did her masters in environment in her later years and made a huge contribution. She did her work so quickly the public servants around her didn't like her very much, so she decided not to work for the Public Service anymore. She went out and worked for other areas. It was a story of a beautiful girl who died of ovarian cancer. This was the week that I was sitting there hearing this story and thinking, 'We must have worked out fairly quick that there was something wrong.' But it was said in one of the speeches—and the doctor said it then—that we don't actually expect Australian women to be stoic. They are. They are tough. People like my mum went for years with illnesses undetected and just put up with it, until they found out what it was. Women have been doing that in Australia since the tall ships arrived, and probably long before that, toughing it out and doing the right thing—'There's nothing wrong with me.' Have you heard the line, 'Oh, there are a lot worse off than me around the place'? Have you heard that line? 'I don't need to go to the doctor.' They accuse men all the time of not looking after their health by going the GP—true, true—but there are a lot of women who do the same thing because they are busy, because they are active, because they have grandchildren. That average age of 64 frightened me too because that is the age when people should be enjoying the best part of their lives. Sally was 54. She had the perfect opportunity. She looked after her mum; she was looking after her dad, who was over 90. She nursed her mum to death beautifully. She came home to look after them. There wasn't a problem with money—throw everything you like at it. Isn't she beautiful? Well, she's one of 1,000 this year and 1,000 next year and 1,000 the year after. We say to the government of the day, as a group of parliamentarians concerned about our response to ovarian cancer, 'There will be 3,000 people dead over the next three years due to this cancer.' If we had that in any other field, for heaven's sake, we would be saying, 'What are we going to do?'

You know, two months ago we were in here asking for more money for lung cancer. Not all lung cancer is connected to smoking. It can be connected to a whole lot of other things, which people have found out over time. Yes, we need to put more research into this. But, when we do that, we have got to remember they are real people with real lives, with real stories to tell and with real families who are broken-hearted. If we had the facilities and resources to have a real go at ovarian cancer, why shouldn't we be first in the world to come up with an early detection? Why shouldn't we be? Not why aren't we but why shouldn't we be the first in the world? If you want a nation that is looking forward, that can change the world not only for the rest of the world but for our women here, our families—our sisters and our daughters and our mums—we can do it. We just need the energy.

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